Both David Biespiel’s recent piece, about Jihadis and postmodern poetry, and G.C. Waldrep’s reply to it are disappointing; the former far more so than the latter. Ironically Biespiel commits a similar complicity to the one he accuses contemporary poets of condoning. His use of Arabic is simply a conduit for necropolitics, the perpetuation of the Arab and Muslim image as primarily one associated with death and murder.
The Arabic that Jihadis use in their so-called poems that Biespiel cites in translation is so hackneyed that no Arabic poet today would call poetry. David’s use of the Jihadi chants (that is precisely what they are in Arabic, worn out oratory that is no closer to poetry than an anthem or a drunken ballad might be) is at best sensationalist. He would have done better to consult with an Arab or Arab American poet, for example, or recall his readings of the pitfalls of translation and its often plagued politics of reception and construction. G.C. equally skims over this fact. Perhaps both authors would benefit from re-reading Spivak’s essays on translation? Why should either bother with an examination of the language of savages? For both authors Arabic is not the point: for David the mention of Arabic is merely a ploy; for G.C. it’s a distraction he prefers to absent.
Biespiel’s shenanigans cannot be uncoupled from a clear desire to juice up his essay with controversy. For what is easier today, in English specifically, than to bring up a negative association with anything Arabic or Muslim and then juxtapose it to the grand, diverse American or Western “we”? This is in no small part what prompted G.C. (and many responders in the comments section) to stand up to Biespiel’s piece. “No we are more decent than that,” they seem to be saying. Meanwhile G.C. can’t resist sharing with us his moral agony over the murder of Neda Soltan (another dead Muslim), just as he can’t resist the obligatory mention of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and which great white poets he turned to for solace and wisdom on each occasion. G.C. defends “us” well. That much I agree with.
In both pieces there is what I call the John McCain moment. When a woman in the crowd accused Obama of being an Arab, he responded “No ma’am, he’s a decent man.”
By now most of these reflexes have become classic, automatic, and predictable. It is disheartening when poets reduce themselves to cultural mimes and memes. G.C. Waldrep’s reply amounts to no more than a rallying cry that restores the “us” against the “them” without having to speak a single word about “them;” Biespiel’s piece talks about the bad “them” by talking a little bad about “us,” and that’s his alibi. Both authors are concerned with self-referentiality, Western literature and its good guys, especially when juxtaposed to a lowly other (with Nazism as the default analog). Biespiel got what he wanted. His name is in the conversation, trending now, at the expense of Arabic and Arab poets.
To be clear, again, I side with G.C. Waldrep’s defense of “our” poetry. I would have had one less reservation about it had it been in response to a piece that spoke about only “us,” “our” language and “our” barbarous civilization without the mention of Arabs, Arabic or Muslims. But I cannot excuse him his omission, if only because he inadvertently affirms Biespiel’s necropolitics. Neither poet mentions any Arab poet (or a Black poet for that matter), as if Arab poetry lives outside the poetry clock of “our” time, the poetry clock of both written pieces.
And why does G.C. inform us that he is a “practicing Christian”? David Biespiel does not inform us that he is Jewish. And, dear reader, I want you to know I am not a practicing Muslim. Whatever any of it means, I wonder if David and G.C. would benefit from re-reading Edward Said’s Secular Criticism. And I still wonder how many readers will dismiss my piece because it highlights the “microaggression” of orientalist tendencies in American poetry (as mirror of larger cultural norms), tendencies that go unchecked too often.
I said it before and I say it again. Maybe George Oppen’s great poem, “Semite,” was written with Palestinian children in mind. Maybe it’s time we think of beauty when we bring up things Arabic or Muslim. Maybe the effort that this entails would teach us something about how more beautiful we can all become. And yes, let me offer you Amjad Nasser’s Petra as a starting point. There is no war in it or tragedy. It’s a book-long poem with very few parallels to it. I am tired. America has been engaged in the murder of countless Arabs and Muslims for decades now. Let’s not pretend that this death-making has not infiltrated, in various styles, many a poet’s mind.